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 purpose, but his delaying to do so for three or four days, and the outbreak of the second civil war, prevented the fulfilment of this design (Short Memorials, p. 5). Lambert was despatched to the north to check the march of the Scots, Cromwell to the west to suppress the insurrection in Wales, while the general himself undertook to provide for the safety of London. Clarendon goes so far as to say that Fairfax, even at this date, refused to serve against the Scots (Rebellion, xi. 8, 58). The Kentish royalists were crushingly defeated at Maidstone on 2 June, and on 13 June Fairfax laid siege to Colchester, into which the leaders of the insurrection and the remnant of their army had thrown themselves (, vii. 1137, 1155). The garrison held out for seventy-five days, till hunger and the impossibility of relief forced them to surrender (27 Aug. 1648). Fairfax has been severely blamed for the execution of Lucas and Lisle, and the subsequent condemnation of Lord Capel. Their execution, however, was no breach of the terms on which Colchester capitulated. By those terms the lives of the soldiers and inferior officers were guaranteed, but the superior officers surrendered ‘at mercy,’ which was beforehand defined to mean ‘so as the lord-general may be free to put some immediately to the sword, if he see cause; although his excellency intends chiefly … to surrender them to the mercy of the parliament’ (ib. vii. 1247). In accordance with the discretionary power thus reserved, Lucas and Lisle were immediately shot by sentence of the council of war, ‘for some satisfaction of military justice and in part of avenge for the innocent blood they have caused to be spilt, and the trouble, damage, and mischief they have brought upon the town and the kingdom’ (ib. vii. 1243). ‘The other leaders,’ wrote Fairfax, ‘I do hereby render unto the parliament's judgment for further public justice and mercy, to be used as you shall see cause.’ Parliament thought fit to condemn Capel to death, and for that sentence Fairfax was in no way responsible. Capel pleaded that quarter had been promised him, and Fairfax was called on to explain to the high court of justice that the promise was subject to the reservations above mentioned, and did not in any way bind the hands of the civil authority (Short Memorials, p. 9). The charge of equivocation which Clarendon brings against him is entirely unfounded (Rebellion, xi. 257). While the siege of Colchester was in progress parliament had opened negotiations with the king on terms which the army and the independents deemed unsatisfactory. Both called on Fairfax to intervene. During the siege of Colchester, Milton addressed to him a sonnet, in which he was summoned to take in hand the settlement of the kingdom and clear the land of avarice and rapine (Sonnet xv.) Ludlow came to the camp and urged him to prevent the conclusion of the treaty, to which Fairfax answered in general terms that he was resolved to use the power he had to maintain the cause of the public (Memoirs, ed. 1751, p. 101). As soon as the siege was over, regiment after regiment presented addresses to their general against the policy of parliament. He transmitted to the House of Commons the army remonstrance of 16 Nov., in which the rupture of the treaty and the punishment of the king were demanded in the plainest terms. He requested, on their behalf and his own, that the remonstrance might be immediately considered, ‘and that no failing in circumstances or expressions might prejudice either the reason or justice of what was tendered or their intentions’ (Old Parliamentary Hist. xviii. 160;, vii. 1330). At the same time, to prevent the escape or the removal of the king, he sent Ewer to replace Hammond as governor of the Isle of Wight. On 30 Nov. another declaration was published in the name of the general and army complaining of the laying aside of their remonstrance, disowning the authority of the majority of the House of Commons as corrupt, and promising to own that of the honest minority if they would separate themselves from the rest. Like the former, this was backed by a private letter from Fairfax to the speaker (, Memorials of the Civil War, ii. 70). The army then occupied London, and on 6 Dec. Pride's Purge took place. Fairfax protests that he had no knowledge of the forcible exclusion of the members until it had actually taken place, and the statements of Ludlow, Clarendon, and Whitelocke appear to confirm this.

But his retention of his post after Pride's Purge, his answers to the demands of the commons for the release of their members, and his signature of warrants for the confinement of the prisoners render it impossible to acquit him entirely of responsibility (Old Parliamentary Hist. xviii. 461, 465). His attitude with respect to the king's execution, though somewhat similar, was more decided. It may be conjectured that Fairfax approved of the trial and deposition of the king, but did not contemplate his execution. The army remonstrance had styled Charles ‘the capital and grand author of our troubles,’ and demanded that he should be specially brought to justice for ‘the treason, blood, and mischief he is guilty of.’ This ought to have opened the eyes of Fairfax to the probable